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Early Decision II and Early Action II: Why do colleges offer a second round of "early" applications

©2016 Sameer Gupta
©2016 Sameer Gupta

Some colleges offer students the option of applying early decision or early action in a second round of application deadlines. They are known as early decision 2 (ED2 or EDII) and early action 2 (EA2 or EAII) applications.

Most colleges have their first (or only) early decision (ED) and/or their early action (EA) deadlines during the October-November time frame. The admission decision from ED or EA is conveyed to the applicant by mid December. The second round of “early” deadlines for ED2/EA2 is usually around Jan-Feb time frame which is also the time frame for most of the regular decision deadlines! This may seem surprising to many students and families that the ED2/EA2 deadlines can be so close or even concurrent with regular decision deadlines.

The rationale that goes into offering an “early” second round is quite simple. Some of the students who would be a good fit at the college may have applied early decision or to a restrictive early action college, which precluded their applying early decision to other private colleges. By mid-December these students will have received the response to their early application. If deferred or denied admission, these students now can apply early decision in the ED2 round. Something to note here, that many more colleges offer the ED2 option as opposed to the EA2 option.

Since the acceptance rates for the “early” application rounds such as ED, ED2, EA, tend to be higher, many students take this account as a part of their application strategy. However, the ED2 option should be part of the supplication strategy fairly early on because there may not be enough time to prepare the application before a Jan deadline after receiving the ED/EA/REA decisions in mid-December. We are not saying that it is impossible, just that it can be challenging to put together an application that does the student justice.

Check out your list to see which colleges on your list have the ED2/EA2 option, because not all colleges that offer early application options will offer ED2/EA2.